{"id":37730,"date":"2014-10-15T15:28:28","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T15:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37730"},"modified":"2017-06-08T01:45:35","modified_gmt":"2017-06-08T01:45:35","slug":"is-race-genetic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37730","title":{"rendered":"Is race genetic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is race genetic?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Salon<\/a>
\n2014-10-12<\/p>\n

Laura Miller<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Advances in genealogy and DNA<\/a> analysis tell surprising and disturbing stories about the heritage we think we know<\/em><\/p>\n

A bestselling European novelist, while on a recent American book tour, was approached by a woman clutching a manilla folder. \u201cWe\u2019re related!\u201d she told him, opening the folder to reveal old black and white photos, documents and a family tree. She pointed to a dour-looking 19th-century lady posing stiffly in a black dress and explained that this was her great-great-grandmother, the novelist\u2019s great-great-great-aunt.<\/p>\n

He was kind and patient, but clearly no more than mildly interested in the materials she treasured. Maybe he had more relatives than he knew what to do with back home. Maybe the whole thing was too reminiscent of the years when his homeland was occupied by a foreign power pathologically obsessed with establishing \u201cpure\u201d lineages. Or maybe he just believes in looking forward rather than back. He had, after all, books to sign, cities to visit and even more books to write once he got back, and perhaps defining himself by a future he can shape seems a lot more appealing than dwelling on the past he can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Many Europeans see genealogy as a peculiarly American preoccupation \u2014 and of course billions of people in places like China view it merely as a human one, the way we make sense of our place in the world. Christine Kenneally<\/a>, an Australian journalist and the author of \u201cThe Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures<\/a>,\u201d has talked to adherents of both sides and has a lot of ideas about \u201cwhat gets passed on,\u201d as she puts it. Where Kenneally comes from, the \u201cbad blood\u201d of convicts transported from Britain to the antipodes was once regarded as a cause for shame, something best not talked about by their descendants. No longer: she recalls working on a school project in which her classmates happily dug up convict ancestors to boast about.<\/p>\n

A good bit of \u201cThe Invisible History of the Human Race\u201d is devoted to defending genealogy and the desire to know one\u2019s lineage. Apparently, many historians look down on the amateur penchant for tracing family trees; it is not research but \u201cmesearch,\u201d too small-picture, too personal to constitute true scholarship. To the layperson, disproving this canard (which Kenneally does neatly) hardly seems a battle that demands to be fought, but when Kenneally takes up the subject of DNA and race, she enters more hotly contested territory. What does it mean to link the slippery concept of race to the scientific study of genetics and the historical facts that constitute an individual\u2019s ancestry?…<\/p>\n

…Henry Louis Gates, Jr.<\/a> himself serves as an excellent example. He\u2019s \u201cblack,\u201d that is, African-American (as well as a professor of African-American Studies), although the aforementioned DNA analysis revealed that 60 percent of his genetic material is of European origin. Does this make him less black? Not on that infamous evening in 2009, when Gates was arrested by a white police officer in Cambridge, Massachusetts<\/a> while attempting to enter his own house.<\/p>\n

Yet what Gates learned about his genetic ancestry did change how he understood his identity, and he would later announce on \u201cThe Oprah Winfrey Show<\/a>\u201d that he and the officer who arrested him share a common ancestor in the Irish king, Niall of the Nine Hostages<\/a>. That\u2019s the gist of much of the genealogy- and genetics-based programming that Gates has hosted for the Public Broadcasting Service<\/a>, shows like \u201cAfrican American Lives<\/a>\u201d and \u201cFinding Your Roots<\/a>\u201d: We are all more connected than we realize…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Advances in genealogy and DNA analysis tell surprising and disturbing stories about the heritage we think we know<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2039,8],"tags":[18148,2935,7449,9029,10962],"class_list":["post-37730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-media-archive","tag-christine-kenneally","tag-henry-louis-gates-jr","tag-laura-miller","tag-nicholas-wade","tag-salon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54122,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37730\/revisions\/54122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}